Elizabeth Berg Quotes

My mind was in my heart, anchored like a bright kite in a safe place.

Don't let your habits become handcuffs

You are born into your family and your family is born into you. No returns. No exchanges.

People say you should give until it hurts. I say you should give until it stops hurting. Know what I mean?

The seasons tell us, everything in organic life tells us, that there is no holding on; still, we try to do just that. Sometimes, though, we learn the kind of wisdom that celebrates the open hand.

You feel the call. That's the important thing. Now answer it as fully as you can. Take the risk to let all that is in you, out. Escape into the open.

Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.

I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.

I like to listen to sad music when I’m sad. It seems honest. It makes me cry, and sometimes a good cry is the only thing that can make you feel better.

There is love in holding and there is love in letting go.

Now, on this road trip, my mind seemed to uncrinkle, to breathe, to present to itself a cure for a disease it had not, until now, known it had.

There is incredible value in being of service to others.

I hadn't realized how much I'd been needing to meet someone I might be able to say everything to.

I turn off the radio, listen to the quiet. Which has its own, rich sound. Which I knew, but had forgotten. And it is good to remember.

I will come back as a little breeze. You will feel me on your face, and you will know that I am still listening. So you can still talk to me.

The truth is, aging can be your realest opportunity to decide how best to live - and the best incentive for getting you to do just that.

Sometimes serendipity is just intention unmasked.

It feels like some part of me that was curled down and waiting in the dark has risen, and now stands stretching and strong in the sunshine. I knew it.

I thought of the priest who'd told me that many religions hold that it is easier to be closely connected to people we love after death than before.

...in my head, a person who was out walking and walking in the dark comes to a little house with a light on. Waits at the door for a moment, and then goes in finds such a welcome that she stays.

If I were to draw on a paper what gym does for me, I would make one dot and then I would erase it.

I hoped we never had to realize all the opportunities we missed in this life.

My inside self and my outside self used to match. A compass needle pointed true north. Now the needle spins around and around indicating the sad direction of nowhere.

Anything we have, we are only borrowing. Anything. Any time.

Just one look and then I knew that all I longed for long ago was you

You don't get everything all at once. You wait.

I would make an anonymous call and say, this is someone who cares, do you know what kind of children you have?

It is such a terrifying thing to see a man cry.

I have wanted you to see out of my eyes so many times.

There are some things you never say good-bye to

This is one rule about mixing boys and girls: that a date always comes first.

I think one of the reasons we have children is to believe everything all over again. And I'm not talking Santa, here, either.

I remove my wedding rings and put them in the jewelry box. So many others have done this. I am not the only one. I am not the only one. But here, I am the only one.

Never be afraid of doing the thing you know in your heart is right, even if others don't agree.

The truth is, we usually only show our unhappiness to another woman. I suppose this is one of our problems. And yet it is also one of our strengths.

How important things had become, now that they were gone! I felt a sudden panic that I would soon forget everything.

We are assumed to be rather hopeless - swallowed up by incorrect notions, divorced from the original genius with which we are born, lost within days of living this distracting life.

As a writer, you should have a sticky soul; the act of continually taking things in should be as much a part of you as your hair color.

*We give so little when it's in us always to give so much more. It's bothering to listen with an open heart to someone who smells bad. It's hard.

No one wants to mother more vigilantly than a woman who is childless and wishes she wasn’t.

books are like confort food without the calories

Remember me in your dreams, as I will you.

Ruth has friends like other people have wardrobes. I mean that there's someone for every occasion.

I hate banana bread. It's too suspicious-looking. I always thought the cooked banana looked like insect legs.

It will happen when you're not looking for it. Love likes to take you by surprise.

I believe that the souls of women flatten and anchor themselves in times of adversity, lay in for the stay.

Abstracts are real and time is a lie, it cannot be measured when one moment can expand to hold everything.

Sometimes you know before you know.

It is never about how good your voice is; it is only about feeling the urge to sing, and then having the courage to do it with the voice you are given.

I don't think men try to make women be like them, but I think women try to make men be like them, a lot.